tenv Poverty II

No Matter How Small

 

By John Taylor; 2008 Apr 22, 13 Jalal, 165 BE

 

Silvie dragged us twice to the cinema to see her latest obsession, the animated feature film, "Horton Hears a Who." Now she is pressuring me to drive her to mall after mall in quest of the missing link, her final addition to a line of "collectible" shampoo bottles featuring characters from the film. Dr. Seuss wrote this annoying story just after the Army-McCarthy Hearings; its mantra is, "A Person's a person, no matter how small." Needless to say, such was the spirit of the age that if Dr. Seuss had made his point less allegorically at the time, he would have been burned along with all the other victims of Senator McCarthy's witch burnings. An even more annoying group than the book itself, abortion rights lobbyists, later on tried to adopt this as their slogan, but reportedly Dr. Seuss threatened to sue them. The climax of the story comes when the smallest member of Whoville saves them all and a lesson is learned by all about who is really important in this world.

 

I have trouble waking up Silvie and Thomas in the morning, especially on school days, but this morning I figured out a way to lubricate the process. It occurred to me that maybe the original 1970 television special, a reading of the book by Dustin Hoffman, was available on YouTube. Sure enough, there it was -- which is why I am here writing this now instead of begging, cajoling, threatening and eventually dragging reluctant kids out of their bed. Thank you, YouTube.

 

Am I the only Baha'i interested in saving the environment? I did a lonely little Web search for other Baha'i environmentalists, and found on a blog called "Owen's Meanderings" an introductory article on rooftop lawns called "Green roofs for green homes." (http://owen59.wordpress.com/2007/11/02/green-roofs-for-green-homes/)

 

It is not a bad introductory article, though when I read about green roofs I cannot help but wish that we could take it a step further and have green rooftop gardens instead of just rooftop lawns. Grass is inedible by humans, and worse, a lawn is extremely thirsty and water is becoming a more precious resource every day. I just read the blog of Bill Nye (the science guy), and he supplements his diet quite nicely with the green veggies he grows in his backyard garden. That is the way to do it, grow the leafy part of your diet as close as you can to where you live. As Pollan points out in his Defense of Food, our factory diet restricts us to a legume and maize-based diet that is not natural to our bodies. Reading about the efforts of Nye, a member of the elite, to live more like the little guy, the one who is "a person no matter how small" seems ironic. Here we North Americans are pumping out our greenhouse gases to Africa, causing droughts far in excess of any aid we send there, and then we tsk tsk when, in direct reaction to the droughts we caused, there is war, genocide and, as we are told by news reports from Tanzania, in contrast to the metaphorical witch burnings of McCarthy they have real live witch burnings of old ladies singled out as scapegoats.

 

Yesterday's Holy Day I did not write anything, but the essay before that I wrote "The Poverty of Environmentalism." In it I observed that many are have misgivings about our survival chances; they are being called "new environmentalists." Current energy technology, scientists and new environmentalists alike are beginning to worry, is just not good enough. I had barely finished writing that when I came across a study in the influential publication Nature. It probably is the original inspiration of the popular articles that had inspired my "Poverty of Environmentalism."

 

The big question is: Will current technical means be enough to overthrow King Coal? Unlikely, says the Nature article, called "Dangerous Assumptions."

 

"How big is the energy challenge of climate change? The technological advances needed to stabilize carbon-dioxide emissions may be greater than we think, argue Roger Pielke Jr, Tom Wigley and Christopher Green," in Nature, April 3, 2008,

 <http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v452/n7187/full/452531a.html>

 

These scientists argue, in effect, that we are rolling down a hill that is getting rapidly steeper.

 

"Because of these dramatic changes in the global economy it is likely that we have only just begun to experience the surge in global energy use associated with ongoing rapid development. Such trends are in stark contrast to the optimism of the near-future IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) projections and seem unlikely to alter course soon. The world is on a development and energy path that will bring with it a surge in carbon-dioxide emissions -- a surge that can only end with a transformation of global energy systems. We believe such technological transformation will take many decades to complete, even if we start taking far more aggressive action on energy technology innovation today."

 

These scientists appear to be gearing up the IPCC for a much more pessimistic report than the last, that famous report that moved environmentalism from the fringe to the mainstream, and relegated climate deniers from the mainstream into the ignominious company of holocaust deniers. Their next report will not be for a few years, but if the authors of this study are listened to, it will have a very different tone. In other words, the hill we are rolling down looks like it will turn into a cliff, a sheer drop from which there will be no question of slowing down by known means. Once we are airborne, we had better sprout wings fast or we will be out of luck. Here is the conclusion of the paper:

 

"Enormous advances in energy technology will be needed to stabilize atmospheric carbon-dioxide concentrations at acceptable levels. If ... most decarbonization does not occur automatically, then the challenge to stabilization could in fact be much larger than presented by the IPCC. ... climate policy would be better informed by having a clear view of the size of the technological challenge. The IPCC plays a risky game in assuming that spontaneous advances in technological innovation will carry most of the burden of achieving future emissions reductions, rather than focusing on creating the conditions for such innovations to occur."

 

The clear and present danger of runaway climatic disaster galvanized scientists into forming this IPCC. Suddenly, it is the most influential international body in the world, even more, I would say, than the United Nations. They even shut up the ideologue in the White House. Now he is conceding their point, and trying to co-opt it as best he can. I am one of the smaller members of Whoville, and what I say matters less than a speck in the wind, but if there is a Horton waiting to advocate, here is what I would say:

 

What we need is a similar sense of urgency on the part of religious people. Scientists are not the only ones who can save us. The world's people of faith need to reconcile their differences and speak with a united voice on behalf of God's good earth. Only a united Parliament of Religions could hope for the moral authority that the IPCC has achieved in a brief time by diligent interdisciplinary study.

 

So, I would call out to the Universal House of Justice. They are the Horton, the big elephant, granted infallibility by Baha'u'llah, who can start this going. I would call and beg them to found a standing parliament of religions, the institution for reconciliation between creeds that Baha'u'llah called for. Let the Baha'is take the first step. If nobody else wants to join, just leave empty seats for them. But for God's sake, let us get an institution started, no matter what. Why not have its first session on the 100th anniversary of when Abdu'l-Baha suggested it, in 1912.

 

What should that standing parliament of faith do? How can a United Believers speed up the process of finding cheap, unlimited energy sources, doing what these scientists call "creating the conditions for such innovations to occur"? For one thing, even beyond what this body does on its own, it would be giving a terrific example to the world. Other groups would say, "Well, if the religions, who have been divided and sunk in hatred for one another since day one, if they can come together in saving us, maybe we can too."

 

And remember, Baha'u'llah called for a "universal gathering of man." That means that every trade and profession would gather as well, and learn to cooperate in this urgent task. For the challenge is not going to be solved by throwing money at it; research, behavior and expectations will have to be adjusted too.

 

I ask you, is now not the time for humanity's belief in God to bear fruit? God will help us, but we must pay attention to the means to the end, for results depend upon means. That is the teaching of Baha'u'llah, as well as of science. With the heating of the atmosphere, surely the fire mentioned in the following passage is taking on a far more literal meaning than anybody might have expected even a few years before.

 

"O MY SERVANTS! Ye are the trees of My garden; ye must give forth goodly and wondrous fruits, that ye yourselves and others may profit therefrom. Thus it is incumbent on every one to engage in crafts and professions, for therein lies the secret of wealth, O men of understanding! For results depend upon means, and the grace of God shall be all-sufficient unto you. Trees that yield no fruit have been and will ever be for the fire." (Baha'u'llah, Persian Hidden Words, #80)

tenv 11th Hour

The Poverty of Environmentalism

By John Taylor; 2008 Apr 20, 11 Jalal, 165 BE

 

I am calling this essay "The Poverty of Environmentalism" in memory of the late, great philosopher Karl Popper's famous attack on quasi-religious politics, "The Poverty of Historicism." Popper pointed out there that although communism had a pretense of being scientific, this was belied by its core belief that history would reach a tipping point all by itself and that a worker's paradise would come about on its own as the result of inevitable, ineluctable historical forces. This, Popper proved, is not a logical deduction based on evidence. It is an irrational assertion based on blind faith, not subject to refutation. Anything that cannot be proven wrong constitutes "not nonsense, but non-science."

 

The same applies to the environmental movement. Like all "isms," environmentalism is non-science. It notes that our world is deteriorating, but when it comes to actually solving the problem, the only answer is silence. Environmentalism produces what Nabokov called doughnut truth, "The truth, nothing else but the truth, but with a big hole in the middle." What is the hole? The means to the end.

 

Last night I rented the DVD of last year's environmental feature documentary film, "Leonardo DiCaprio's The 11th Hour." This is, according to the blurb, a "look at the state of the global environment including visionary and practical solutions for restoring the planet's ecosystems." In other words, it is intended to be An Inconvenient Truth, II, without the jokes or the PowerPoint slides, but with more recent, and therefore more dire, information. Wikipedia has a brief review at:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_11th_Hour_(film)>

And the Internet Movie Database has a few more details, at:

<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0492931/>

 

This movie consists of stock footage, some of it quite impressive, supplementing points made by what one reviewer calls a "never-ending parade of speakers about the need to address the environmental collapse that threatens to destroy our way of life, and indeed our very lives." They are undoubtedly a lineup of the best thinkers on the environmental problem that mankind has to offer. Our Canadian saint, David Suzuki was in that number. But what they all are saying seems so hackneyed, so utterly inadequate, especially the religious leaders. The movie starts off pointing out how wonderful humans are, how amplified our powers are by science and industry. Okay. Then it contradicts itself. We are not so wonderful, because we are fouling our nest. All agree at great length that we are killing the planet because, vaguely, we have lost touch with nature. So what? Is adopting a more natural philosophy going to turn global warming around? They all seem to think that this is saying something. It is like a detective going to a murder scene and saying, “Yes, look at all this blood; the killer, if there was one, was certainly out of touch with the pain of others.” Is saying that going to solve the mystery? All it does is say that maybe we need a new detective.

 

Then, finally, the film comes at long last to the kicker, the hopeful solutions to the problem. Talk about bathos, baby! You have to multi-task to even grasp it, since somebody is talking even as they flash unrelated footage about green projects onto the screen, labeled in tiny print. Insofar as I got them, some are good ideas.

 

But the question remains, what is going to save us?

 

Surely, I keep thinking, the solution is not just a holistic attitude. It has to start with radical political and legal change, not just technological tweaking. When finally they do feature a couple of lawyers and political specialists, what do they suggest? Let us make the American constitution a little more flexible. Update it every few centuries. Is that it? Is that all you got? The world is about to be burned, baked, poisoned and drowned, and all you dare suggest is to lobby the powers that be to tweak a document that is over two centuries old in a stinking rotten, obsolete political entity? Let me talk about other things while I calm down.

 

I was surprised when 8-year-old Tomaso sat down and watched the entire film with me. I would have thought that three hours would be way beyond his attention span. I guess it was the fact that we had been playing a 1993 board game (that I had picked up at St. Vincent de Paul's for a quarter) earlier that day called "Environmental Warriors." The quizzes and lessons of the game jibed with the film serendipitously. The litany of problems laid out in "11th Hour" goes on for about three quarters of the film, at least half an hour longer than it should. I was finding it pretty depressing myself at times, so I hit the pause button frequently and talked it over to be sure that my little guy was not losing hope in our collective future. I sure was, so I had to pretend to be more optimistic than I felt at the time. Thirteen year old Silvie watched a little but found some images "disturbing," and missed the humor in An Inconvenient Truth, "We watched Inconvenient Truth at our school recently, and the segment from "Futurama" was the only part where the entire school laughed."

 

Okay, my heart is beating slower, so I will return to the documentary itself.

 

The highlight of the film for me was Janine Benyus, whom I have already discussed on this blog ("Wallace to Benyus," 2007 Aug 07 <http://badiblog.blogspot.com/2007/08/wallace-to-benyus.html>). She promotes what she calls biomimicry, "the conscious imitation of life's genius." Although what she says is undoubtedly innovative, exiting and hopeful, it would be absurd to pretend that bio-engineering, however effective it may be in the long run, going to do anything to solve the shrieking crisis of global warming. Biomimicry is not going to slow those relentlessly belching coal plants anytime soon. To put faith in a techno-fix like that is non-science, not even faith, it is spitting at the moon.

 

The interview with a former head of the CIA is the low point. Environment and global warming are so threatening that spies are sitting up and taking notice. Glory be, a security threat! Florida and Manhattan will be inundated, and without a shot fired or bomb dropped. Well, their concern may be a sign of how bad it is getting, but dredging up secret agents of a long-dead nationalist order (they are called spooks for a reason) and looking to them for answers, well, that is just sad.

 

Watching this film I was reminded of every final examination I ever failed -- and believe me, I am a world-class expert on that. When you have filled three quarters of the allotted space and you look up at the question and realize that all you have done is rephrase the problem, well, that is a good sign that you are not going to get full marks. Same way, environment experts that spend most of the time persuading us that the environment is our hope for survival – they are never going to get full marks from posterity. I am not saying that when people decades from now watch this film they will get nothing out of it. In fact they are very likely to say, "Ah, now I see why nothing was done to keep the Greenland ice sheet from turning into the world's biggest ice cube. The leaders of thought did not think. They did not dare break out of the nationalist box that bred them."

 

After the film was over I was lucky to have on hand a Macleans Magazine article that I had not read yet, "What it will really take to stop global warming," by Colin Campbell. I grabbed and devoured it with vim. This at least recognizes the fact that changing a few light bulbs is never going to stop the most enormous problem humanity has ever faced. The article points out that the environmental movement, having been on the fringe and shut out of mainstream policy-making for so long, is geared up only for grassroots approaches. (I would add that the religious thinkers are geared down to individualistic guilt tripping instead of reconciliation and collective action) As far as environmentalists are concerned, world government might as well be a project like what Tomaso suggested, unifying the Milky Way galaxy, or our local galactic cluster. It is just out of their sights, a fantasy. The word “world government” not in their vocabulary. Easier to think in old nationalist ways, break up and fight over it. Let the poor point fingers at the rich, and vice versa. And this article does its share,

 

"In the developing world there is very little understanding of why they should cut their living standards and deny their kids better health care or schools or things that we take for granted to avoid a problem in 50 or a hundred years." (Macleans, April 7, 2008, p. 45)

 

Yes, there are saints working for a better earth in localities around the world. But there is no instrument for accomplishing their goals. Helpful as localism may be in slowing growth, it is just not going to cut it. That at last is being recognized, especially by economists. They are realizing that as long as solar panels cost ten times more than coal plants, the rules of economics will keep coal king, especially in China and the United States.

 

"The only thing that may be able to spark the kind of radical transformation that is needed, say many in the new environmental movement, is a huge boost in public spending on energy research and development -- something on the magnitude of the spending that fueled the U.S. space program. `We should not pretend that all these technologies exist and we just need to scale them up or that a modest price for carbon will accomplish anything like that.' says the Breakthrough Institute's Shellenberger. Things like wind, biomass, and solar power do not yet exist in forms that could fuel the world's energy needs. Shellenberger likes to cite Al Gore's conclusion to his "An Inconvenient Truth" documentary that "we already know everything we need to know to effectively address this problem." Gore has since revised that, stating that we have everything we need to *start* fixing the climate problem. But this, says Shellenberger, is a bit like saying that we now have everything we need to start traveling at the speed of light." (Ibid.)

 

Will an effort on the scale of the race to the moon make solar and other energy sources cheaper than coal? It is certainly an appealing idea. Whereas the moon race was done out of nationalist pride, this race would be for our collective survival.

 

But one thing is missing.

 

The United States long ago had to swallow its nationalist pride and seek funding and technical help from other nations in maintaining the International Space Station. And even with help, the ISS is limping along. And even if by some miracle cheap fusion power were discovered soon enough to make a difference, how would unlimited energy alone solve the dozens of environmental disasters that are fighting to destroy us first? How cheap would cheap power have to be to replace an already working power plant?

 

Someday, somebody in the environmental movement must tweak to the fact that in order to run an entire planet there must be planetary government. In order for democracy to be worthy of the name, all must agitate for the sacred right to an equal, proportionate vote in a world federation. Nothing less than an elected world polity would have the moral authority to make laws to protect the oceans and other natural areas that all, rich and poor, will have to obey. As the Hidden Word says, ends are dependent upon means. Anything less than addressing the means to the end is nothing but blind, stupid dreaming.

p20 defense of Baha'i

Reader Response; Brilliant Proof

In response to 8 year old Thomas's question: "Who was more evil, Mirza Yahya or Mirza Muhammad Ali?" Reader “Jimbo” offers an answer and a passage from The Brilliant Proof, a work that the Master commissioned from the greatest Baha'i scholar at the time in response to an attack that took place in response to Abdu'l-Baha's initial visits to England and Paris. A quick search of the Web turned up a review in a scholarly journal of the latest edition of Brilliant Proof, which I append at the end of this mailout. It gives more details on how this book came to be than I knew of before.

 

Hi John!

I would think that persecuting the Manifestation of God would be worse, but a certain man by the name of Peter Z. Easton caused Mirza Abul Fazl Gulpaygan to write "The Brilliant Proof" in defense of 'Abdu'l-Baha whom the former had attacked verbally and publicly. I include an excerpt below including "Should one accounting himself a teacher of good morals and a spreader of the superior virtues of Christianity characterize himself with a quality which is the most specific sign and attribute of Anti-Christ? No! by the Life of God!" (bold added) and yes jealousy is mentioned as the spiritual disease.

 *****************************************************************

 The Brilliant Proof (Burhane Lame) by Mirza Abul Fazl Gulpaygan

 =================================

This etext is based on:

"The Brilliant Proof" (Burhane Lame) by Mirza Abul Fazl Gulpaygan

Written December 28, 1911, in Syria

Published at Chicago, 1912

Press of Bahá'í News Service

=================================

 HE IS THE LIVING, THE SELF-SUBSISTENT!

 In these days which are the latter days of 1911, A.D. and the early days of 1330 A.H., I have seen a curious article which astonished me. What did I see? I find that one of the missionaries of the Protestant sect, who accounts himself among the learned men of the twentieth century, a helper of the pure religion of Christ and one of the civilized and cultured occidentals, by name, Peter Z. Easton, has been so provoked by jealousy at the universal spread of the heavenly word of His Holiness 'Abdu'l-Bahá throughout the vast expanses of Europe that he has trespassed the limit of courtesy and humanity and published an article replete with execration and calumny in the magazine "Evangelical Christendom."

 Yea, jealousy has caused many to fall from the high station and lofty summit of courtesy and thrown them headlong into the low depths of vain words and the writing of falsehood and slander. But the fire of jealousy has flamed in this person with even greater violence for he has seen how that glorious man, Archdeacon Wilberforce, as befitting the station of men of learning and of eminence, has spoken of 'Abdu'l-Bahá as "Master" before a great assemblage and introduced him with terms of glorification and commendation to a mighty gathering.

Having considered the entire contents of the above article I found the writer's sole aim to be an attempt to allay the fire of his jealousy by the mention of evil words and execration; to count himself as victorious by wielding the arms of calumny and falsehood which are usually the only sword and sole weapon in the hands of a weak and ignorant opponent. The realization of this caused even greater regret and remorse, for I had never supposed that such traits and objectionable qualities could be manifested by souls who pretended to civilization and moral culture. Are there not enough revilers, calumniators and prevaricators in the other parts of the world that such should also appear from Europe? Should one accounting himself a teacher of good morals and a spreader of the superior virtues of Christianity characterize himself with a quality which is the most specific sign and attribute of Anti-Christ? No! by the Life of God! Manifestors of such evil qualities do exist in the world even as dawning-places of glorious qualities are also visible and manifest, in order that the blessed words of the Christ, "Ye shall know the tree by its fruit," may be fulfilled, and that those who are akin to His Holiness Christ -- upon whom be glory! -- may be distinguished from those who are contrary to Him.

His Holiness 'Abdu'l-Bahá calls the people of Europe to the lofty attributes of humanity, but Peter Z. Easton teaches them libels, execration, falsehood and calumnies!

His Holiness 'Abdu'l-Bahá summons the dwellers in the world to unity and harmony, but Peter Z. Easton invites men to division and inharmony!

His Holiness 'Abdu'l-Bahá lifts his blessed hands heavenward in the assemblage of prayer and invokes blessing and mercy for the people of Europe from the Court of the Almighty, but Peter Z. Easton attempts to prove in learned magazines the remoteness of the people of the East from praiseworthy Christian qualities, and desires that torment and punishment should fall upon them!

'Abdu'l-Bahá commands: "Speak evil of no one and wish evil for no one;" but Peter Z. Easton says that no one should wish well for, or consider as worthy of grace, a people whose number he himself estimates as three millions!

I wonder therefore how we are to distinguish the good and evil fruits of the tree of existence; and how shall we comprehend and interpret the blessed words: "Ye shall know the tree by its fruits?" To my mind there is no criterion but this, and Peter Z. Easton cannot teach otherwise.

Consider the thirty-fourth verse of the twelfth chapter of the Gospel of St. Matthew, where His Holiness the Christ says: "O ye generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak of good things?"

Yea, if it were possible for the sugar-cane to yield a bitter fruit and for the fragrant rose to exhale a foul odor, such signs as these ("ye shall know the tree by its fruits") would never have been revealed in the heavenly books and such distinction would never have been appointed as the correct criterion.

Consequently that which emanates from His Holiness 'Abdu'l-Bahá consists in calling men to the principles of faithfulness and accord, and exhorting them to good morals and lofty attributes; while that which appears from Peter Z. Easton consists of varying degrees of falsehood, calumny, libels, execration and the like. The purpose of all this is that the nature of each of the two persons may become manifest, that the fruits of the tree of existence ;may be distinguished and men may find the true standard.

(Mirza Abu'l-Fadl, The Brilliant Proof, p. 4)

 *****************************************************************

The Brilliant Proof, by Mirza Abu’l-Fadl Gulpaygani. 80 pages, appendix. Los Angeles, CA: Kalimat Press, 1998. $14.95 (Cloth) ISBN 1-890688-00-2 review available at: http://fp.arizona.edu/mesassoc/bulletin/36-1/36-1ModIslamPol.htm

Reprinted here, with a new introduction, is an article originally published in 1912 by the Baha’i News Service in Chicago in response to a Christian missionary’s polemic attack on the Baha’i faith published the year before. Rev. Peter Z. Easton, whose “Baha’ism—A Warning,” appeared in the British magazine Evangelical Christendom, had served as a missionary in Azerbaijan for many years beginning in 1873, and was angered at the warm reception afforded Abd ul-Baha, the son of the founder of the Baha’i faith, by an Anglican minister at St. John’s Church in Westminster on 17 September 1911. Easton’s piece, included in the work as an appendix (pp. 73-80), characterizes the Baha’i faith and Babism, the movement from which it sprang, as the latest manifestation of “Persian pantheism,” a tradition including, in his view, the movements of al-Muqanna’, Babak, the Qaramitah, and the Assassins, “who for 170 years, from 1090 on, inaugurated a reign of terror compared with which the French Revolution was child’s play” (p. 78) They are based, he holds, on the utter and unquestioning obedience of the devotee (murid) to the guide (murshid). Baha himself, the founder of the faith, is called a “betrayer, assassin, and blasphemer.” In short, Easton characterizes Babism and Bahaism as anathema and the adherents to the faith as violent and satanic fanatics.

In Beirut later that year, Easton’s article was presented to Mirza Abu’l-Fadl Gulpaygani (1844-1914), a Twelver Shiite jurist who had converted to the Baha’i faith and become one of its most prominent scholars. He immediately authored a Persian refutation under the title Burhan-e lami’ and had it sent to the United States, where ‘Abd ul-Baha had it published along with an English translation. The refutation addresses Easton’s attack under four rubrics: 1) accusations against Baha’ullah, 2) pantheism, 3) attitude toward despotic government, and 4) distinctive or superior features of the Baha’i faith. Gulpaygani dismisses Easton’s accusations against Baha’ullah as slanderous and berates him for listening to the evidence of Baha’ullah’s enemies alone. Baha’ism is not, he argues, pantheistic, but rather monotheistic, rooted in the Abrahamic faiths and based on their successive prophecies. Baha’ullah, rather than supporting despotic government, urged the establishment of popular consultative and representative institutions. Finally, ten features of Baha’i faith are presented as distinctive and improvements over other religious doctrines: 1) rejection of oral tradition in favor of established texts, 2) rejection of divisive interpretation of God’s word, 3) emphasis on the unity of mankind and avoidance of divisive doctrines, 4) prohibition of slavery, 5) considering work in allowable professions as a form of worship, 6) mandatory education of both sexes, 7) prohibition of cursing, insults, swearing, and blasphemy, 8) prohibition of arms except in extreme circumstances, 9) establishment of local Houses of Justice, parliaments, and constitutional governments, and 10) a new fractional inheritance system. This short work provides an interesting view of the Baha’i faith and its adherents’ struggle for acceptance in the early twentieth century.

Devin Stewart

Emory University

Doughnut Truth

Good Calories and  Bad

By John Taylor; 2008 Apr 18, 10 Jalal, 165 BE

 

I have been very slowly reading through Seth Robert's book, "The Shangri-La Diet." A few weeks ago I tried and failed to go on this diet in its olive oil version. Unfortunately when I took olive oil on an empty stomach it made me nauseated. I plan to try again using a different oil in a month or so (you can use almost anything, including sugar water, as long as the body does not associate taste with the calories). Here is an interview explaining the basics of this diet on the website of Calorie Lab,

 

Interview with Shangri-La Diet author Seth Roberts

http://calorielab.com/news/2006/04/15/interview-shangri-la-diet-author-seth-roberts/

 

I like how Roberts starts off his book with this incisive quote:

 

"Vladimir Nabokov coined the term doughnut truth to mean only the truth, and the whole truth, with a hole in the truth."

 

This expression "doughnut truth" aptly describes the lack of scientific method that afflicts dietary studies. Francis Bacon, in one of the guys who started science going, said that one good book replaces a hundred mediocre books. When the learned think scientifically, that is just what happens. Old theories, old advice, are replaced by newer and better ones. In diet, though, mediocre book after mediocre book is churned out, and contradictory advice doled out without agreement or discrimination. And this goes on while obesity is rising to epidemic proportions!

 

Something is gravely wrong.

 

The hole in this doughnut is large and gaping, and all that comes out of the knowledge machine are more doughnuts.

 

Roberts has an excellent blog and discussion area from which I learned a great deal. Here he introduces a science writer named Gary Taubes, whose most recent book about dietary science actually does treat food and weight loss as a science. Taubes has had an interesting career. He wrote a book about the cold fusion controversy in the 1980's. Unlike many scientific thinkers, who try to find out truth or help mankind, he is devoted to investigating and understanding error in science. Over decades he has scoured the scientific world to find the worst scientists, and interviewed them in detail. I have not read his books yet, but I was very impressed by how much I learned just by a few articles and interviews with Taubes. Here are some blurbs for his latest book on diet,

 

"Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health"

 

Blurbs: "Good Calories, Bad Calories is a tour de force of scientific investigation, certain to redefine the ongoing debate about the foods we eat and their effects on our health." "Gary Taubes' `Good Calories, Bad Calories' is easily the most important book on diet and health to be published in the past one hundred years. It is clear, fast-paced and exciting to read, rigorous, authoritative, and a beacon of hope for all those who struggle with problems of weight regulation and general health--as who does not? If Taubes were a scientist rather than a gifted, resourceful science journalist, he would deserve and receive the Nobel Prize in Medicine."

 

This is wonderful! A writer who specializes in what is science, and what is not. In interviews he talks about what makes a good and a bad scientist, and what it means to follow the scientific method, rather than to just mimic it the way just about everybody with the slightest claim to authority does, especially when it comes to diet advice. Most interesting is this, where Seth Roberts interviews Taubes:

 

http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dhm4f3rg_36gg4956dm

 

Taubes has interviewed some of the worst scientists in the world, and in the interview he goes through the qualities and failings of these fellows, and indicates how he separates the sheep from the goats. The lousy scientists are eminently knowledgeable and academically highly qualified, yet they fail to take the necessary leap to objectivity and humility that makes for science. I will include a section of this interview at the end of this essay, but now I only say that as I read how Taubes discerns a bad scientist, I could not help but think about what makes a person a good Baha'i or not. Auxiliary Board members have to do what Taubes did, they have long interviews with believers who are on the border between resignation, "dis-enrollment" or breaking the Covenant. Fortunately, the rest of us are spared from that depressing job. But reading this interview, I was surprised at how close these lousy scientists are to the lousy Baha'is who are so notorious in our history. For example, in our children's class, reading a children's biography of the Master, Abdu'l-Baha's half-brother, Mirza Muhammad Ali, turns up again and again. Last night Thomas asked:

 

"Who was more evil, Mirza Yahya or Mirza Muhammad Ali?"

 

I could not answer that. Both were pretty bad. I guess the only answer is "God knows," unless, that is, one of my learned readers can point to an authoritative source that says one was worse than the other. Both were attacked by envy -- the green eyed monster. They envied their Brother's pre-eminence, and tried to co-opt it. Of course, when I talk about the green-eyed monster our kids object vociferously, since both have green eyes, as does their mother. So I have to add that there are green-eyed people and green-eyed monsters, and never the twain will meet. For one thing, one is beautiful and the other is not -- though sometimes I offer subliminal comment by sneezing, "Ahh, ahh, chFREAKooo!"

 

Anyway, my point was that the demands of truth are the same on all: in this sense, religious truth is the same as scientific truth. We have mind children and then we are obliged to as it were beat them, or like Abraham did with His son, put them up on a rock and sacrifice them. That is, we have to be humble and regard ourselves and our mind children as fallible, and go out and try to prove them wrong. Otherwise we are not being scientific or a Baha'i.

 

Seth Roberts Interviews Gary Taubes

 

INTERVIEWER What did that scientist say that made you rank him so low?

TAUBES There are all kinds of signs. He told me there was no controversy, when there was obviously a controversy. His side might have been right, but to deny there as a controversy was ludicrous. He talked about the legitimacy of throwing out negative data. You measure salt consumption one way; you do not see any effect on blood pressure, and so you decide that is obviously the wrong way to measure it. The implication of everything he told me  was that he knew what the answer was before he did his experiments, and then he adjusted his experimental techniques and methodology until he got the answer that he wanted.

 And he believed this was legitimate science. There are other signs.

 I am a stickler about the use of words like evidence and proof. So if someone tells you there is no evidence for some controversial belief, you can be fairly confident that they are a bad scientist. There is always evidence, or there would not be a controversy. If somebody says that we proved that this was true or we set out to prove that this was true that is another bad sign. The point here, as Popper noted, among others, is that you can never prove anything is true; you can only refute it. So researchers who talk about proving a hypothesis is true rather than testing it make me worried.

 

INTERVIEWER Yeah, I see what you are saying. They overstate; they twist things around to make it come out the way they want. They are way too sure...

 

TAUBES Yes, and the really good scientists are the ones, almost by definition, who are most skeptical of evidence that seems to support their beliefs. They are most aware of how they could have been fooled, how they could have screwed up, or how they might have missed artifacts in their experiment that could have explained what they observed.

 

They are very careful about what they say. If you ask them to do play devils advocate, and tell you how they could have screwed up, then at the very least, they will say: "Well, if I knew how I could have done it, I would have checked it before I made the claim. So when I'm talking about discerning the difference between a good scientist and a bad scientist, I'm talking about how they speak about their research, the evidence itself, its presence or absence.

My friends in journalism would often ask me this question: by what right do I think (I can) make decisions about who is a good scientist and who is not. I would say,

 

"Well, when you're an English major, you can be confident that Norman Mailer was a better writer than John Grisham, even though John Grisham makes 10 to 100 times more money. Its just a feel for what you do; I do not know how else to describe it. I know a good scientist when I talk with one. I might be fooled, on occasion, but..."

 

TAUBES Yes, that's a very good sign, but these people don't realize they're saying the same things and doing the same experiments and making the same mistakes that their predecessors made a century go because they don't bother reading that literature. For reasons I still don't really understand, these people see no reason to pay attention to the history of their field. Imagine if physicists saw no reason to pay attention to Einstein and Plank and Maxwell and Heisenberg? I mean, these guys all lived a century ago, why would anyone want to know about them or the experiments they did? But in physics, mathematics and even biology, the history is carried along with it. As the science progresses, it takes with it the successful ideas and the students learn about the history along with the science.

 

In obesity research, World War II just cut all of that off. For whatever reason, several generations of researchers grew up with this belief that the history of the field does not matter. And so they don't even know or care that they're saying the same thing and doing the same experiments that their predecessors did 100 years ago. And then this latest generation is  full of young molecular biologists, and they start the clock in 1994, when leptin was discovered. They are not aware that they are not making progress, because they believe that nothing of value was done until 1994.

 

TAUBES Beginning in the 1960s, when newspapers institutionalized this idea of having diet and health/nutrition writers on newspapers, and its still the case, for the most part, today, the people who got those jobs were not the shining intellects on the newspaper, and the shining intellects did not want to be diet and health writers. If you are a whip-smart young guy or girl who wants to go into journalism, you want to be an investigative reporter, a political reporter, or a war correspondent; you do not want to write about diet and health.

 

Or at least you did not.

 

So I think that was one of the problems. You got not very smart people; truly mediocre reporters, doing jobs that turned out to have remarkable significance and influence. I do think that Jane Brody is as responsible as anyone alive for the obesity epidemic. She just bought into this idea of the low-fat diet as a healthy diet, and her sources in New York told her that Atkins was a quack, and that fat was bad, and she never questioned any of it. I do not know if she had the intellectual wherewithal to do it.

 

In any other field of reporting, as far as I know, reporters are supposed to be as sceptical of their sources as scientists are supposed to be sceptical of their data. Certainly, if George Bush tells a political reporter something, that political reporter does not treat it like its true. He might faithfully report what George Bush said, but you are supposed to be sceptical of what government institutions tell you.

 

So now it's 1977, the McGovern Committee and the USDA make these proclamations about what constitutes a healthy diet, and there is simply no scepticism. (With the possible exception of Bill Broad writing in Science Magazine, which no one outside the field of science was reading.) So the government tells us that we should eat low-fat diets -- and not even learned authorities in the government, but Congressman and USDA bureaucrats channelling 30-year-old congressional staffers -- and lo and behold, all these health reporters  decide it must be true. That is the failure. In my fantasy life, I get a call from the managing editors of the New York Times and the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal and they say they have read my book and they want to know how they can improve their health and diet reporting.  Because they can see, whether or not I'm 100% right, or 80%, or only 50%, surely their reporters did something wrong. Now there's a fantasy for you.

 

INTERVIEWER Yeah, I agree. That makes sense. So, what would you say?

 

TAUBES I have not figured that one out yet. Get some of your political reporters to do the health writing. Get the smarter people on the paper to do it.

 

INTERVIEWER Well, I always thought of you as one of the very few science writers who was sufficiently skeptical. Practically none of them are.

 

TAUBES That is basically the problem. This lack of skepticism. But I had an advantage. . . You will remember, in my first book, I got to live at a physics laboratory and I was lied to regularly by a Nobel Prize-winning physicist. His conception of truth was what he needed to be true at the moment, and what he could get people to believe. So if you called him on the lie, and he was kind of a charming fellow, he would acknowledge that he might have misled you, and then he would step back and try another lie, because it was not in his best interest to tell the truth.

 

Then I did this book on cold fusion where I spent three years, basically, getting lied to constantly by anyone who thought it was in their best interest. There was a period in my life where it was hard for me to trust anyone, because I had just been around too many people who believed that the truth was what was convenient. I also knew, by the time I got into public health reporting, I knew what it took to do good science.

 So, if somebody was not doing it, I knew there was no reason to put them on a pedestal. The first article I ever wrote for Science magazine was an investigative piece of an alleged fraud that had happened in the cold fusion episode -- a fundamental result that kept the field alive for another few months could not be explained by nuclear physics.

 

That alone was so remarkable -- as one of the smartest men in the world suggested to me, a physicist named Dick Garwin at IBM -- that it should have made everyone suspect fraud. If something cannot be explained by a very well-tested theory, you would question the ethics of the researcher who did the work before you would question the theory. This is Hume's idea that eyewitness testimony is never good enough to make you believe in the existence of a miracle, because a miracle is, by definition, something that is impossible by all our accepted theories. Its easier to believe that 10, 100, or 1000 people were deluded or dishonest then it is to believe that the Virgin Mary really did appear in Times Square or whatever your miracle of choice is.

 ... What happened when you met with the [UC Berkeley School of Public Health] epidemiology students?

 

TAUBES Again, it was a little discouraging, only because these kids really want to do good, they want to make a difference in the world. Thats why they go into the field. They want to have an effect. But as I say at the end of the book, to do science right, your primary motivation has to be to learn the truth, and if you are infected with this desire to change the world, to save lives, it takes you away from the fundamental motivation, which is to get it right.

If you want to save lives, then you want to get the word out as quickly as possible. You don't want to wait ten or twenty years or more for definitive evidence, for the rigorous tests to be done; you want to give advice and tell people what you've learned, even if you only think that you've learned it. Doing science right takes a long time.

So does good journalism.

 You can say the difference between my book and Gina Kolata's book is -- not counting whatever difference in intellect we begin with--my book took five years, more than full time, because I was not going to say anything until I was certain that what I was saying was sound. She wrote her book in two years, part-time, while still working full-time as a New York Times reporter.

p26 Abulia

Upcoming Events

Mention of Baha'i

Baha'i Classes

Silvie's fan fiction

Curing Consultative Abulia

==========

 

Upcoming Events

 

No More Fanatics!

 

Dunnville's Baha'i Fireside for next month will be Tuesday May 13th with Joe Woods as our speaker. Joe's topic is slated to be: "An End to Religious Fanaticism." As always, it will take place 8 PM, at the Garfield Disher Room of the Dunnville Branch of the Haldimand Public Library.

 

Philosopher's Cafe Announcement

 

Philosopher's Cafe

 

Topic for discussion:

"Democracy vs. Meritocracy"

 

The April Philosopher's Cafe discussion had a good mix of new friends and old. The topic was "What is Progress?" Many definitions were given. The give and take of ideas took us in several directions, but in the end we all agreed that a good topic to discuss next time will be the problem of reconciling the will of the people with the consensus of expert opinion. This will have to be done if we hope to reverse climate destabilization and stop ruining the environment. I have discussed this in more detail on my blog, at:

<http://badiblog.blogspot.com/2008/04/tenv-bugbomb.html>

 

Philosopher's Cafe discussion at the Wainfleet Library: A second Thursday of the month destination for provocative, insightful discussion around ideas and issues that matter.

Thursday, May 8th, 2008

6:30 p.m. in the meeting room of the Wainfleet Library

Wainfleet Township Public Library

Wainfleet, ON L0S 1V0

905-899-1277 www.wainfleetlibrary.ca

 

Mention of Baha'i Faith in Wall Street Journal

 

"In Search of...Something, A growing number of Chinese, unmoored by rapid change, are finding answers in religion"

 The description in this article of the Baha'i Faith as "factionless" shocks one's ears at first. I had never heard our lack of sects described as "factionless," then you realize it is a negative way to portray a very positive virtue.

"That search for answers is surprisingly broad. Protestantism is gaining followers, and the revival of Buddhism is evident in the increasing number of people who wear prayer-bead bracelets -- a rare sight in China just 10 years ago. Among a small but growing class of wealthy executives in Beijing, Baha'i, a factionless faith founded in 19th-century Persia that stresses the unity of all groups including races, classes and religions, is gaining a following." (Jason Dean and Loretta Chao, April 12, 2008; Wall Street Journal, p. R4 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120767838373098625.html?mod=googlenews_wsj)

 

Baha'i Classes

 

We have been having daily Baha'i classes before bedtime. At first the kids drew as I read, but now they mostly listen. I have been trying to get them to stand up and talk about what they learn, since in my opinion the Canadian educational system does not have enough emphasis on public speaking and thinking on your feet. I have only done it once, though, and need to figure out a way to make in more exiting for them. Right now we are reading a page from the Virtues project (recent virtues: forgiveness and friendliness), then a chapter or two from Hitjo Garst's new children's biography of the Master, then a chapter from the Book of Matthew.

 

Silvie's fan fiction

 

The lure of online computer games (which their school encourages) is very strong for 8 year old Thomas. If I left him alone, he would spend every moment of his evenings and weekends glued to the computer. Now that the weather is better I boot him outdoors after an hour maximum. When I was a kid they had force us to come inside to eat; now it is the reverse.

Silvie uses the computer not for games but to read fan fiction, especially from her favorite animal fantasy series, Silverwing. Many of these unofficial Silverwing stories are written in German or French, but that does not stop her. She goes over to Babblefish, an online  machine translation service, and has them translated into what seems to me to be complete gibberish. I asked her how she can enjoy this mess, and she says she finds it perfectly natural to figure it out. She uses her entire alotted hour each evening reading this mishmash. I chose a paragraph at random, machine translated from the French -- so judge for yourself if this is readable, much less readable for pleasure. (notice that for some reason Babblefish does not translate some words, like grogner, to growl)

 

"It was distant... too even. It did not address almost more the word to him, thing that Luna found afflicting. It had now become a practice which it only finds with the Hole. It could not be prevented one evening, however, from intercepting the prince and of knowing what arrived good once for all! It was surprised to see it grogner and tighten the teeth in front of it and to want to leave to far. But Luna was then satisfied to say curtly: - Why do you flee in front of the problems? Goth solidified... It laughed in itself because it had already said that to him one day, but it was turned over towards it with a furious air. - I do not flee! - Then why you do not speak any more? It was going to retort something, but only a sigh left. Slowly it lowered its ears. - Luna... I reflected they are last times and... I believe that... you should turn over in north."

 

Curing Consultative Abulia

 

"God, whose law it is that he who learns must suffer.

 And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget,

 falls drop by drop upon the heart,

 and in our own despite,

 against our will,

 comes wisdom to us

 by the awful grace of God."

 -Aeschylus, the Agamemnon

 

There is, somewhere on the net, an archival film of Robert Kennedy reciting this ancient poem while announcing the assassination of Martin Luther King. If you doubt the effectiveness of poetry, and the primal force of reciting words by memory, consider that in that city where Kennedy announced the news there was no rioting that night. In just about every other city in the United States that dark night blood ran in the streets, so furious were the Blacks at their hero being killed by a White. But not there...

 

Watching Kennedy recite that rather difficult and profound poem, I was inspired. Man, this is the power of words that have melted into you during real suffering. No wonder they put this poem on his gravestone. Clearly, reciting just any poem would never have had the effect that this did. Clearly, Robert Kennedy had memorized these words as a way of coping with the recent assassination of his brother, JFK; everybody there knew it. He had stayed up late at night, in real pain as those words "pain that cannot forget" burned deep into his soul. He had felt what the Blacks in that audience were feeling right then. That is why the shock and indignation of his listeners at a very similar loss was quelled so effectively.

 

And that is why our present privately owned press is so insidious and dangerous. These corporations profit when emotions are inflamed. Reconciliation is not in their interest. It is boring, and does not sell advertising. On that night in that town, it was as if a controlled social experiment were tested and proven: a violent, inflammatory situation can be made better when the bearer of ill news is the right person to speak it, and speaks from the heart. Who knows but that by now we would have our climate and environmental abulia under control, if only new research findings over past decades had been given in a disinterested, sincere way, by the right person from the heart? Who knows how far we would be to a united, singular world by now?

 Baha'u'llah is calling for martyr-heralds to arise and behave like Bobby Kennedy did that night. The news that these messengers bear, though, is good news. His words that follow show that Baha'u'llah is calling for such a herald, someone who can answer what He calls the "highest calling." Somewhere, someone is burning in an hour of agony these words deep down soul, being readied to pour out conciliation to a generation in anguish.

 

"God grant that he may be enabled to sincerely voice, and to act in accordance with, the following words: `Say: It is God; then leave them to entertain themselves with their cavilings.' May he endeavour to guide those deprived souls who remain secluded in darkness and obscurity towards the light of the Sun. May he seize, through the potency of the Most Great Name, the banner that speaketh of naught save His Revelation and march at the forefront of the people of the former religions, that perchance the darkness of the world may be dispelled and the effulgent rays of the Sun of Truth may shine upon all mankind. This, in truth, is the most perfect bounty and the highest calling. Should man fail to attain unto this sublime station, where then can he find comfort and joy? What will sustain and animate him? With whom will he commune at the hour of repose, and whose name will he invoke when he riseth from slumber? Again: `Verily, we are God's, and to Him shall we return.'" (Baha'u'llah, Tabernacle)